


I Have Heard The Voices Calling, Each To Each

by ERNest



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Beaches, M/M, Metaphysics, Non-Human Angel and Demon Forms, Other, Stargazing, transcendentalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-27 22:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.(Genesis 1:9-10, NIV)Or, the one where they are a beach.





	1. every creeping thing that creeps upon the shore

Aziraphale’s feet hover above the ocean sands; patient, waiting, present. Far off, a ripple builds into a swell and Aziraphale still waits. Still distant but closer now, the wave crests and breaks and the water rushes forward beyond its own bounds. When its remnants sweep across the sand and just barely touch his soles, Aziraphale dissolves.

He is the mist that rises before the sun does, he is the tiny variations in the sand and the way they’re echoed when the water is this shallow, the whisper of drying sand as the ocean recedes into itself. He is the sun rising at last and the glimmer of stars not visible to the naked eye but still and always there.

Besides, his is not the naked eye. His are thousands of eyes that start from their spheres and pierce thousands of others. His are invisible and every color and none at all. When he raises his voice to praise the coming of a day made by the Lord, the song does not come from a mouth or even many mouths. The air quivers into music and the waves collide, and that’s Aziraphale too. And his are not the only eyes to see the stars. Someone else is watching.

A handful of ghost crabs (but whose Hand? and whose Ghost?) scuttle back and forth across the smooth shelf of sand worn down by water. They each dart from one hole to another; each one’s path seems randomly devised and the movement of all of them together seems unconnected too. But they are part of the same thing, for Crowley is here on this beach. He is the tiny mollusks squirming back into the sand as the ocean recedes into itself and takes away the top layer of protection. He is below the beach as far down as it takes for the sand to stop being sand and start being earth, and there he holds the world steady enough for the shifting ebb and flow of life above.

With the eyes of the crabs but not with eyes alone, Crowley perceives the pinpricks through reality to the stars that he invented, and the eyes he doesn’t have, grow misty. That mist and the sea foam merge and part again, and then he answers the heavenly melody with a passing gull’s demented laugh. It’s the best he has to offer and in the space left by the contrast he finds himself lacking, but together they almost sound right. The faint lines, shadows of old waves, are Crowley’s ineffable version of a smile.

The sun rises quickly this morning and the world passes through the mystery of near-night to the magic of sunrise to the relative mundanity of broad daylight. The light is yellow now instead of orange and catches each distinct wave instead of smearing itself across the expanse of the vasty deep. It is still beautiful in the manner of a thundering heart; where before the entire experience was the transcendence of a heart that catches on itself in awe and trembling. Thus the hosts that _were_ the work are free to let the work do itself.

Crowley reconfigures his human vessel first. He nudges a crab with his foot and smiles fondly as it goes. By force of habit he whips out a pair of shades to shield his eyes and their vulnerabilities. Then he aborts the motion with the frame dangling from his fingers. He doesn’t need that here. Down along the shoreline people are emerging to swim or stroll, but they’re too far off to see him for a snake.

As the only person whose opinion matters has eyes enough to know him even when he does hide, there’s no point in concealing himself. With Aziraphale he finds he doesn’t even want to. “Angel,” he says, holding out a hand. He doesn’t say it like a question, but rather like in it he’s found an answer.

And there Aziraphale is.


	2. moved upon the face of the waters

When the sun gets to be too bright, Crowley does put on the shades after all, but not to be cool this time. He has been in the presence of a much more searing light, and once upon a time – before time, even – he loved that light. But now his form is only human, and his eyes are not prepared to face the Glory.

Children scream and run into the waves, then run away again when they find it’s too cold for them. It’s hard, he knows, to really know what you’re getting into, but he finds it admirable that so many of them still venture back out to be buffeted by the waves. Watching the tiny agents of chaos at work with no fear makes him want to have a broader influence than he can on these two feet. He squeezes the angel’s hand one more time and the clasp turns slimy and squirmy, and then he’s all the strands of seaweed lying in wait for unsuspecting travelers. There are no jellyfish in this part of the ocean but Crowley lingers in the whispers of older children trying to terrify their siblings that there _might_ be.

Aziraphale waves a hand to send a wave of reassurance in that direction. It won’t cancel the demon out entirely but the world would be a lot less interesting if neither of them had _any_ lasting effect. At the moment he unfurls his wings, two different people lay out towels, which each stream symmetrically in the wind before they settle at last on the sand. The micro-topography shifts gently to accommodate the beachgoers sitting down. Even when they are gone, the land will remember the imprint of a shin, a hand, a toe idly tracing a pattern. This is not long lasting enough to be either a covenant or a legacy, but an acknowledgment that someone was there and someone was watching isn’t _nothing_ , Aziraphale knows.

Some distance away, a seagull steals a sandwich, which just means that Nature is operating as it should be. The tide goes out and leaves foam behind; the tide comes in and sandcastles collapse or moats fill dramatically, depending on how prepared their creators were for the impending cataclysm. And among everything else, crabs continue to burrow into their holes and carry sand to somewhere else, hardly seeming to notice the larger mammals moving through that same world.

The clouds pile up on the horizon. When it was still dark they just looked like more darkness, but now they loom like mountains. The earth continues to tilt until the clouds adorn the sky as mere framing for the sun.


	3. your borders are in the heart of the seas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Ezekiel 27:4

People talk like there’s only one thin red line between humanity and the darkness, between the sand and sea and sky. In fact, there are many, and this pair has been them all.

The dunes slope down to the sand of the beach but overflow any line there might have been to cover the bottommost stair. There is a difference between that powdery stuff and the sand that got wet more recently but still long enough ago that the grains are distinct. The separation _must_ be there because it feels so different underfoot, but the border is approximate and subjective, tangled together like two hands reaching to clasp at last. In any case, the direct paths composed of erratic clawmarks are clearly visible on each.

Where they do not show up is on the sand that has been packed down to semi-solidity by the constant rushing back and forth of water which has not come so far in quite some time. Although – not quite solid. The surface shifts more and more readily as time goes on, and ‘still a little wet’ shifts into ‘getting a little dry.’

Then, all along the beach a ridge fades in and out, but usually there. This one _is_ a firm line, though its edges are rounded. The angle of the ground marks time, as well as tide, and even underwater the border will remain. It is the perfect jumping off point from which to saunter vaguely downwards, and comes from the sense that one cannot proceed any further and remain the same. You cannot not have been wet _again_.

And past that, things get even more fluid.

Waves come up to land that’s been wet and is drying out, then falls back and leaves a wet area that shrinks at a slower rate than the wave itself, then _that_ is the slightly damp sand for the next wave to crash onto. Sometimes a wave will surge past the recently wet sand onto the powdery stuff. Up to now, the surface has shifted readily with every foot or shovel or bucket, and it was never the same from one moment to the next. Impermanence was the beauty of it and with a splash of water it has been frozen into a snapshot of a moment.

Thus, every moment is the foundation of the one that follows it; and all of these vague divisions progress up or down the beach with the tide, high and low alike. The lines between times are similarly imprecise.

Aziraphale is the gentle slope of the dunes, Crowley is the high tide ridge, and out into the water Aziraphale is there in the undertow to carry off those who are not paying attention to the signs and current events. Since it must be fair, not even experienced swimmers are immune. But in between those three definite points of separation are so many borders, constantly changed and rearranged, making it impossible to determine which territory belongs to whom. Some bits they take in turns, but mostly they weave in and out of each other to share a body: a body of water or a body of land or something that is neither or both, given for each other.

Crowley takes credit for the departing wave, Aziraphale claims the dampness that lingers on the grains of sand and takes longer to fade away, and they are both in the curl and crash of a perfect crest of water just as the light illuminates it like a manuscript. Neither of them knows whose wind stirs the thin sheets of sand to whisper across the miniature slopes and at this point they’re too afraid to ask.

Spend long enough at all these lines and it comes clear that none of them is a wall, neither of fire nor firmament. From above they make a mesh or some sort of net – depending on your perspective it could capture humanity in its grip, or shield them from the darkness encroaching on all sides. But on reflection it’s more like a map, more like the haze of just living, which is where and how an angel and a demon choose to make their existence.


End file.
